Talking to my daughter may be more difficult than learning quantum mechanics

When I was a boy, I was a lover of rocks, and I learned at the time how to get to know the minerals with a mousse test for hardness, which was called by this name relative to the mineral science specialist who invented, the matter is simply that you take a sample of a well -known metal - such as quartz - and scratch a sample of a metal It is not known, and if the quartz is able to cause a scratch in the mysterious sample, then you know that this metal is soft and less hard than the quartz, and therefore, the sample may be from calcite or pyrite, and if the quartz cannot scratch the sample, then it may be from the beer or the cortex, They are more solid than quartz, and so can a hardness test - besides other factors such as color and crystal composition - can help us determine the type of sample.

I have been fond of the clear and explicit objectivity of the mousse test, and recently, I was thinking a lot about a kind of hardness - we could call it the cognitive hardness - and I found that its evaluation was much more difficult; On the course of our lives, we face a varied and huge group of difficult tasks in cognitive terms; For example, I spent the entire year in the study of quantum mechanics, which is one of the sciences famous for its difficulty, but the question that I had is: Do you learn quantum mechanics more difficult - objectively - than talking to my companion about the tag (hashtag) " # I also" #Metoo The anti -sexual harassment without being angry? Or talk to my daughter about climate change without conveying to her a sense of frustration and depression?

The problem is that the self -assessments of cognitive hardness do not provide great help, because they differ according to the experience and ability of each person, perhaps a person is adept in differential equations, while the last is better in singing the poems The cognitive hardness of different tasks, and then classifying them? Perhaps it is possible for such a way to result in opinions and views that would help us solve difficult problems, or - in contrast to that - make us accept the idea that these problems are not solved, and in any case, dear reader, a few ideas on cognitive solidity.

Small seller issues

Mathematics and computer scientists classify issues according to the period that the computer takes to find a solution for them, and issues are known as NP-Hard if there is no brief algorithm that leads us to the best solution for it, but you must do your best in order to study every possible solution in order to reachbest solution.(The English letters NP symbolizes the "Nonderministic Polynomial Time", a phrase that I have always thought it really means "truly, really").

[Note after publishing: Computer world, Scott Aronson, objects to my description of the phrase "NP-Hardness", and puts a different definition as follows: "The NP term refers to a group of issues that can verify the correct answers of" yes "to it Effectively, through proof or evidence, as for the term NP-had refers to a group of issues that if you have a magical box to solve it, it will allow you to solve all issues that belong to the NP category in the boundaries of time, and many issues are very difficult without being included in The NP-Hard category, and if P = NP, there will be NP-Hard issues (including the question of the street vendor) that is not considered "difficult" in the simple linguistic sense, and there are other issues that are known to be very difficult without restriction or condition, such as circulating a game Chess on any plate or patch of (n*n).]]

One of the famous issues belonging to the NP-Hard category includes a street vendor looking for the shortest way among many cities, the problem is doubled a lot with the increase in the number of cities.Mathematics are several tricks to find very brief ways - if not the shortest - among many cities, but when the number of cities increases to reach thousands, the fastest computer in the world will take almost an endless time to find the shortest way.

Ironically, knowing the journey line that would provide time is easy compared to other problems that the roaming seller may face, and among those problems, for example: What is the period that the seller can spend on the way without endangeting his marital life?And if he feels lonely, is it permissible for him to woo a woman in the hotel pub?And if he feels guilty about his wife's betrayal, what would he say to himself to relieve that guilt?

There is no doubt that what makes this type of problems very difficult is the moral dimension;This street vendor - like that, like most people - wants to believe that he is a good person, but what does that mean?In 2016, I attended a conference that deals with the issue of whether or not artificial intelligence could solve moral dilemmas, there were many funny and funny aspects of the vehicle's dilemma, for example, do you choose to kill a living being, such as a bird, to save something that is not aliveLike Grand Canyon?

But philosophers have never stopped for thousands of years from the debate about moral issues without agreeing to what the moral rules that we should adhere to, explore the famous play "the death of a street vendor" the moral dilemmas faced by one of the street vendors, and similar to most of the literary works, this is thisThe play does not provide solutions to moral problems, but only seeks to draw attention to it.

Is difficulty equal to complexity?

Those who are called the researchers of the complexity between the difficulty and the complexity are equal, so that you assume that you are one of the scholars who are trying to model some complex phenomena, and then explain them, such as the spread of gravitational waves caused by the collision of black holes, or the spread of misleading information on social media, the researchers note that it is difficultYour scientific problem is commensurate with the degree of complexity of the phenomenon that you want to understand.

In addition, the different things may be complex, and therefore difficult to explain, for similar reasons, in the ideal state, one difficult phenomenon modeling leads to the production of visions that apply to completely different phenomena;The development of a better black holes model may lead us to reach a better model and a deeper understanding of the Qanon group, known as adopting conspiracy theory, or this is what the researchers hope for.

Unfortunately, researchers cannot agree on a specific definition of complexity, which is extremely important in their field of work, the physicist Seth Lloyd included dozens of proposed definitions of complexity, based on the theory of information, thermal dynamics, carcinogenic, and other standards, and multiple definitions because it does not existOne is a sufficient definition, and I believe that various difficult issues are due to various reasons for each issue, just as each unhappy family is due to the reasons for their own..

Some physicists insist that everything in this life - including humanity itself - is ultimately interpreted from the angle of the particles that are pushed and attracted by the forces of gravity, electromagnetism, and other powers, and Sabine Hosnfield adopted this position in a modern dialogue between us, but physics is that physicsShe has nothing to say about ethics, meanings, emotions, choices, and other important features of human existence.

Difficulty mathematics..And the English language..Parentine

When I find it difficult to understand the rules of mathematics on which quantum mechanics are based, these rules often seem to me vaguely and arbitrarily, but in reality, the rules for calculating differentiation, complementarity and linear algebra are logical and fully understood compared to the "rules" of the ordinary language;In order to master the English language, you must first learn the letters of the satire, but these letters do not acquire any meanings except when they are combined together in words, and there are thousands of words, and many of these words have multiple meanings, only think about all the meanings of the word "hard".

Then there are all these rules required for the composition of words in a sentence, which are the rules that the users of the language twist and always disagree, as wellMost scholars have a innate talent for learning the language that we inherit from our ancestors, and then we can learn the language very quickly.

Sometimes, when I participate in a dialogue, I find that my linguistic instinct is active, and then I speak relatively easily, then I embody what the philosopher Daniel Dunit calls "efficiency without understanding", and at other times, I find it difficult to understand the words that the person who talks to him speaks,I am overwhelmed with confusion and I am thinking about all the possible ways that I can respond to, this often happens to me when I talk to my daughter or to my son.

It is easy to become a father, in the exact biological sense of the word, so any fool can be a father, but what does it mean to be a good father?The answer varies with different ages and cultures. For example, my son and my daughter are 28 and 26 years old, respectively, yet the feeling of paternity still broadcasts in myself a sense of confusion;Almost every time I meet my son or daughter or talk to one of them over the phone, I will criticize myself after that and complain about what I did, and I wonder: Did I talk more than it should?Or did I not speak enough?

We can evaluate parents by looking at the state of their children, but I know good parents (they provide care and attention and carry good intentions) their children died as a result of taking over doses of drugs, and at the same time I know bad fathers (steeped in their personal pleasures to the point of neglect and negligence), but their children are They have achieved success, and these painful facts carry a positive aspect: if your children do not have a good calamity, you can always blame bad luck, but the most important point that I would like to focus on is that unlike the Sherringer equation, all the puzzles of paternity and motherhood -and all human relations - It has no clear and specific solutions.

The flakes of the sweat..Type..And the brain

Cognitive scholars believe that we have an innate ability to guess what others think about and what they feel, and it is confusing that this talent is called "the theory of the mind", and it is considered one of the important pillars to achieve social success, in the sense of obtaining what we want from others, as well as thatIt is extremely important to ethics;The possibilities of feeling pity for others, and treating them in good treatment, increases if we can sympathize with them, but this theory program cannot take us further than that.

Last year, I participated in a special march with the "Black Lives Matter" movement that was going through my town, some white demonstrators carried banners on which "I realize that I will never understand, but I am standing beside you," the sign indicates that white people like me cannotTo understand exactly what the dilemma means to be black in America, it is a very difficult task;If we say that we understand their suffering, this means that we do not really understand, but rather reveal our ignorance and arrogance, but we can express our support for the Americans with black skin.

This situation also applies to sexual issues, I recently entered into a discussion with my companion regarding one of the most famous literary excerpts, which is Molly Bloom at the end of the novel "Yolisz" written by James Joyce, I love this attractive poetic piece that involves some immorality, and I consider it a masterpiece Artist within another masterpiece, in this survivor, Joyce imagines how the feeling of a wife and a mother lives in Dublin in the early twentieth century, and in contrast, my companions hate this survivor, and she says that it is only a male imagination about what women think, and in fact, I had to Instead of arguing it, I simply tell her: "I realize that I will never understand, but I am standing beside you.".

People with dreamy visions such as Elon Musk hope that the computer chips planted in our brains one day help us to solve difficult issues, for this reason, the NEURALINK company, which is currently building, found "high -frequency interfaces between the brain and the machine,"The chips will link our brains to the Internet and effective programs in solving the issues, such as "Wolfram Alpha", but much better than it.

But I doubt that the chips planted in our brains can help us solve the most important issues.How to seize a measure of happiness without appearing like a fool, there is no doubt that these issues are much more difficult than the most difficult NP-Hard issues.

While I was writing this press column, I remembered why I wanted when I was a boy to become a specialist in metal science, I was already on the outskirts of adulthood, and this did not rise to me, I saw the adult people in front of me either drowned in sadness, or two years of meanness and slander, orThey combine the two, Darradi, that when I am older, I will spend most of my days in the laboratory alone, I only occupy a mousse test on crystal samples, the test of its chemical reactions, examining them with microscope, and expressing my fascination with its ideal, solid, solid beauty..

Additional readings

I am talking about a variety of difficult issues in the latest books, "Mind-Body Problems", which is available for free on the Internet, and "Pay attention: sex, death, and science" Pay Attention: Sex, Death and Science.

My Podcast can also be found: "Mind-Body Problems", where I speak with experts on difficult issues.

This article is an article of opinion and analysis, and the opinions expressed by its author or authors do not necessarily represent the opinions of the "Sentecker American"..